1895

Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain

Nicholas Freeman

Description

Oscar Wilde's libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry and its disastrous repercussions dominated British newspapers during the spring of 1895, but as this innovative study reveals, the Wilde scandal was by no means the only event to capture the public's imagination. Freak weather, a flu epidemic, a General Election, industrial unrest, 'sex novels' and New Women, trials of murderers and fraudsters, accidents, anarchists, bombers, balloonists and bicyclists were all topics of interest and alarm. Drawing on strikingly diverse primary sources, Nicholas Freeman examines the recurrent preoccupations of a turbulent year, showing how 1890s' Britain is at once far removed from our own day and yet strangely familiar.

1895

Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain

Nicholas Freeman

Reviews and Awards

'Nicholas Freeman's entertaining and instructive book [focusses] closely on the events of 1895. He stitches together a rich tapestry of the year's incidents, debates, scandals and diversions...It is a crowded canvas, and a thought-provoking one.'
The Times Literary Supplement